Ben Hendrickson: Why Does He Suck?
Milwaukee Brewers' righty Ben Hendrickson absolutely dominated AAA last season. He finally got his shot in the big leagues last season and pitched very poorly. He showed a few flashes of adequacy in September, but all and all Hendrickson couldn't get it done in the big leagues.

The Brewers organization wanted to give Hendrickson a spot in the big league rotation. He has nothing left to prove in the minor leagues. Given this opportunity and an open competition for the rotation, what did Hendrickson do? Well, he has an ERA of 12.00 in Spring Training and is going to get beaten out by Chris Capuano and either Wes Obermueller or Gary Glover.

So what has gone wrong? Hendrickson doesn't throw hard. He is consistently about 85-88 with his fastball. What that means is he has to hit spots to get big league hitters out. He hasn't done that. Major League hitters aren't going to miss a 88 mph belt high fastball like a minor league hitter might. Not only is Hendrickson missing his spots, he's often missing the strike zone completely. That causes a lot of 2-0, 3-1 counts. When Hendrickson is behind in the count he's not going to get anybody to chase his plus curveball.

When Hendrickson was called up last year I remember talking to my dad about him. He said something like "he is their top pitching prospect?". I remember saying "but he's young", "he dominated AAA", "he's only 23" and after seeing him pitch once or twice he said "he'll never stick in the rotation". As crazy as that sounded a few months ago, it really is starting to look like it could be true. Hendrickson is still too young to give up on completely, but I would guess that most people have readjusted their expectations for him.

I'll pose the question to all of you: Why does Hendrickson suck?